Whitley County School District keeping masks in schools

WHITLEY COUNTY  — The Whitley County School District has made the decision to continue the use of masks by students, teachers and other school personnel. The decision comes after a special-called session of the Kentucky General Assembly saw state legislators remove the Kentucky Board of Education’s authority to issue a state-wide mask mandate for all schools.  

On Wednesday, Whitley County Superintendent John Siler told the Times-Tribune a large determining factor in the school district’s decision was guidance handed down from Kentucky Department of Education, the Kentucky Department of Public Health, and then the Cabinet for Health and Family Services.

In their guidelines, the three entities recommend schools work with local health departments to facilitate case investigation and contact tracing to help identify individuals who have had close contact with a person diagnosed with COVID-19. A close contact is someone who was within 6 feet of an infected person for a cumulative total of 15 minutes while the person was considered contagious.

The guidelines do call for an exception, stating that in K-12 classroom settings, the close contact definition excludes students who were at least three or more feet away from an infected student if both students were engage in “consistent and correct use of masks and other K-12 prevention strategies were in place.”

“If you go into any school not only in the Whitley County District, but in the Tri-County area, now that we’re fully back in person five days a week, in a class of 20-25 kids, being able to space a desk out six feet from any desk around it is not possible,” Siler said. 

Siler also said the district’s decision to continue the use of masks was based on the increasing incident rate in Whitley County, which is now one of the top 10 counties in the country with the highest incident rate per capita.

“We felt like we are in day 25, I think today (Wednesday) of in-person instruction and we’ve done that through the use of masks and social distancing of only three feet with the masks on,” Siler explained. “So, we’re going to continue using the masks and trying to keep everybody safe and in-person five days a week.”